Banning Happy Meals. Need any more proof that these Californians are nuts?

From HotAir.com

My question is again: Why does anyone live or move to California? These people are just frankly out of their minds. But I want them to stay there, because when they start moving out, they bring their totally crazy politics with them. They have dramatically changed the demographics in Nevada politics in the last 25 years and not for the better.

What I have never understood is that they are leaving a state that controls every aspect of their lives and you’d think it’s because government controls every aspect of their lives and yet, they bring those same regulations right along with them and then impose them on their new states neighbors.

Gimme a break and go away or stay away!

Rick Perry said this morning on Fox that this year, over 150 businesses alone have moved to Texas from California. What don’t they get? California is running jobs out of their state with stupid rules and regulations and they keep doing it! It’s no wonder they are broke and jobless there.

Saving California is the biggest waste of money I can think of because it’s nothing more than throwing good money after bad – a little like what the Department of Education has been doing with our tax dollars for decades.

Now that they have banned Happy Meals, and re-elected Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer et al, we need no further proof that they are all certifiable in that state (except for Jim and those few conservatives down in Orange County.) We need to keep them isolated in their own state asylum and away from doing any damage to the rest of us.

In light of this, you’re going to love this story from the UK Daily Mail (2008):

McDonald’s Happy Meals are to be banned in Liverpool over claims they are contributing to the epidemic of childhood obesity.

The city council is planning to outlaw the meals on the grounds that they are damaging the heath of children – particularly as they offer free toys in order to encourage parents to buy junk food for their children.

The Liberal Democrat-controlled authority claims the credit for taking the lead in the campaign that led to the ban on smoking in public places.

Members of Liverpool City Council’s Childhood Obesity Scrutiny Group (do you love this or what?) want a bye-law that would forbid the sale of fast foot accompanied by toys.

Councillors say the promotional items are used to boost sales through the “Pester Power” phenomenon – children pestering parents for Happy Meal toys. There isn’t a parent in all of Liverpool (and now none in San Fransisco) who has the willpower or the intelligence to say no to their children so the Councillors will do it for them.

…

Lib Dem councillor Paul Twigger said: “The Scrutiny Group (Good Lord, this is right out of Orwell’s 1984) is recommending that a bye-law be enforced to stop the circulation of free toys associated with junk food promotions.

“We consider it is high time that cash-hungry vultures like McDonald’s are challenged over their marketing policies which are directly aimed at promoting unhealthy eating among children. Attack any semblance of a free market and quash it and while you’re at it, depress job growth, too. That’s a great plan!

“Childhood obesity is a dire threat to the health in this country and it needs to be nipped in the bud urgently.

“Children are directly targeted with junk food and McDonald’s use the Happy Meals to exploit Pester Power of children against which many parents give in. Once again, parents are not capable of being parents so this is another attempt by the government to infantilize adults.

…
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-517955/Liverpool-set-ban-McDonalds-Happy-Meals-bid-cut-childhood-obesity.html#ixzz14KiuNkJX

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. C.S. Lewis

NPR fires Juan Williams for not being politically correct enough. With an update.

Update: Listening to John Gibson this morning and he mentioned that this is “PLEDGE” week at NPR.  Firing Juan Williams appears to be a calculated decision at NPR in an attempt to raise more funds from the left and its leader, George Soros.

Well Juan, how does it feel to be the one thrown under the bus? How does it feel to no longer be simpatico with your leftist amigos?

NPR is taxpayer funded and yet they have the power to silence – to censor – voices that don’t go along with their leftist ideology. He’s a news analyst,  someone who gets paid to broadcast his opinions.

Now let’s be clear, until I read this quote from Juan:

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I’ve got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

I can’t remember a time when I did agree with him. The one time he actually puts words to the feelings that most people have, he gets canned. He’s been fired for saying, finally, what most Americans think and feel by a news organization that is paid for by those same Americans.

We all know how left leaning NPR is. This is not a news flash. But to censor speech because it is contrary to what some higher-ups in that organization believe, that crosses a line. We pay the salaries of those same higher-ups and pay them to make decisions, not to cram their leftist ideology down our throats. How much more arrogance are we going to tolerate from people who are essentially on OUR payroll?  The heavy handedness of this firing due to a statement that is not politically correct enough for the bleeding hearts at NPR is not just cowardly, it’s the height of arrogance.

Which one of us taxpayers gave them a promotion to speech policemen?

Along with getting rid of the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts and privatizing the post office,  we need to call for pulling the plug on NPR and PBS. And firing someone for having an opinion that disagrees with the so-called bosses, is one more good reason for doing so.

Newsweek and Bill Maher: America the Ignorant and Stupid

If America is ignorant, as Newsweek is claiming, then maybe this is an indictment of the government run education system that we have had in this nation for too many decades. Instead of blaming stupidity on the American people, maybe they should be pointing their elitist fingers at the liberal teachers union and the massive amount of money that we have thrown their way – and thrown away – for over 50 years. What do we have to show for the outrageous amounts that we have given to the Department of Education? An astronomical drop out rate (about 1.2 million students fail to graduate from high school each year) and falling numbers in comparison to other nations (in math scores internationally, only 4 countries have scores lower than ours and 23 nations score better than we do.)

And you know, doesn’t it just seem a little ignorant to call your own readers ignorant? I guess that’s why Newsweek was just sold for $1.

So to return to the beginning, Bill explains his stupid American comments:

Powerful government versus a large one

We often focus on the size of government, as measured in percentage of GDP taxed and spent by the government, which is an important and measurable concept. But our real concern is power. What kind of power does the government wield over the people? Powerful state institutions tend to be large, but that doesn’t mean that a larger state is necessarily exercising more power. Imagine a small town that adds two officers to its police force. Now it has more police officers, and that costs more money; the government is “larger.” But if the officers now do a better job of arresting violent criminals and protecting the lives and property of the people — and refrain from arresting or hassling non-criminals — then the government has not expanded its power. Indeed, better eight officers protecting lives and property than six officers enforcing drug laws and blue laws. We should focus on what is actually important — the exercise of arbitrary power over others.

David Boaz/The Cato Institute

He’s right. Big government is not necessarily a bad thing, if the people choose to enlarge it and if the people choose to fund it. But I don’t think, for instance, that the Founders had a Department of Education in mind when they wrote the Constitution. (You can replace that department with Health and Human Services, Agriculture or any other big government department of your choosing.) The Founders believed that those “services” would best serve the people at the local level. The people would decide how much government they wanted and how much they would be willing to fund. And those departments, because they were local, would be accountable and responsible to the people who chose to fund an enlarged local government.

The seal with branches that resemble sinister tentacles entwined in the leaves and an acorn, which now has an entirely new meaning in our society.

At some point though, this big federal government power grab took place and some do-gooders and greedy elected politicians in Washington, DC determined that the people weren’t smart enough or capable of determining the appropriate curriculum their children needed. They believed that people needed Ivy League academics, primarily from the Left Coast, to make the rules and determine the curriculum for students in Rock Springs, Wyoming and San Diego, California.

Isn’t it more sensible for a citizen to call their school board member or attend a meeting to voice concerns than give it all up to some bureaucrat in Washington, DC? How can an elite academician in Washington know what the needs and desires of students and parents in Butte, Montana are? What gives them the right to mandate rules and regulations on people 2000 miles away?

Departments like education should only exist on the county and state levels and by the decision of the local citizens to determine their existence or not. It would be then responsive and responsible to the citizens who are funding them with their own tax dollars. The people would be able to determine what and how their children are being taught. And people would be able to decide if those school districts were places they wanted their children to be educated in.

Education is a prime example of a state’s rights issue, as is abortion, the death penalty and other areas that the federal government has imposed themselves in.

As Ronald Reagan said, Americans have the freedom to vote with their feet. If a person doesn’t like the government, rules, laws and regulations in one state, he can move to another. Mark Levin, in his book Liberty and Tyranny, said that the mobility of Americans to relocate to areas that are more compatible to their beliefs and desires is what the Founders had in mind and that this diversity in states is what created a more “harmonious union.” I agree and believe that this is what the Founders believed, too.

Instead, what has evolved from the Founders original vision is a one-size fits all kind of government – a socialist government – where the needs and desires of the individual is trumped by the collective majority and power-hungry big federal bureaucracy.

The Founders had faith and trust in the intelligence of the people to govern themselves. We have gone 180 degrees from that and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ever return to what they had in mind.

Desperation in Detroit. What comes next?

from the Detroit FreePress:

“It’s a disaster here,” City Council candidate Gary Brown said. Brown, a former Detroit Police assistant chief, handed out bottles of water to those in line. “This is dangerous. Very unorganized, very dangerous.”

This week, people stood in line for hours to possibly receive $3000 in aid. An estimated 65,000 people lined up to be one of 3500 people who will get a portion of the $15million in stimulus money. Scuffles broke out while people crushed in line.

(AP Photo/The Detroit News, Clarence Tabb Jr.)

28% unemployment in Detroit – 15% statewide. Over 32% of Detroit residents are on food stamps and over 300,000 jobs have been lost in the city from August 2008 to August 2009. The median price of a home in Detroit is $7500. Last spring, the state department of education announced it would close 23 schools, citywide.

Detroit is a city actively dying – once the engine of America, now voted one of “the 10 most miserable cities in America” by Forbes magazine with the highest crime rate in the U.S. – is quickly becoming a ghost town.